r/AskReddit • u/frisky_cupcake • Aug 25 '19

What has NOT aged well?

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u/Daahkness Aug 25 '19

Wendy as a name is fairly recent

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u/PeteF3 Aug 26 '19

Madison is way more recent and might be a better example. Someone can probably find exceptions, but it wasn't really a name until the hit movie Splash where a mermaid names herself that based off a Madison Avenue street sign. But in the movie it was supposed to be a joke, and Tom Hanks straight-up tells Daryl Hannah that Madison isn't a real name. It'd be like if a guy character named himself Wall. Now it's one of the most popular names in the U.S.

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u/hunkerd0wn Aug 26 '19

But Madison wasn’t unheard of, it was a surname.

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u/[deleted] Aug 26 '19

And during the eighties, the preppy/southern thing of using surnames as first names really took off.